Chapter 250: Project Outdoor House

The traditional Japanese farmhouse was the closest reference point her old world had for what these wolves needed.

She knew how much these wolves were averse to shelters, so they needed a structure that was technically a building, but it would still make them feel like they were outside.

A lot of wind needed to pass through, and that would require "optional" walls.

The design would start from the ground up as always.

The foundation pits would have to be very deep. Thick bamboo posts bundled up together would serve as the foundation. The base of the pit would be packed tight with rocks and clay, and those posts would be deep enough to resist flooding, erosion, and the pressure of strong winds.

It was really helpful that the pink bamboo’s density was nearly twice that of standard bamboo, which made it stronger and ideal for structural posts.

It wouldn’t flex under load the way regular bamboo would.

And that wasn’t the only useful benefit amongst many others.

There was something that especially made this the best material for the humid territory.

These pink bamboos were water resistant.

Usually, untreated bamboo buried in wet soil would rot. And while these ones were not like the ones from her world, to be on the safe side, Tera would burn and char the buried parts of the poles.

When the surfaces that would be buried were blackened, the carbonised layer would seal the wood against moisture and insects, dramatically slowing decomposition. Even if it was water resistant, she still needed it to repel insects—which she had hardly seen in this world.

However, Tera still needed her structures to be standing the day a lot of them would return when the world had finished healing.

She could already picture the wolves’ faces when she would eventually tell them to set fire to the stalks.

Above the foundation, the floor of their shelter would be two feet off the ground. A raised platform of bamboo laid across joists, along with a top finishing layer of split bamboo.

That would actually consume a big part of the work since this meant the poles would be broken along their natural grain to create strips that would be woven into proper flooring, much like a mat. Except this would be stronger.

The three-foot gap underneath the floor wasn’t wasted space.

Aside from the airflow, the space was there so that whenever it rained heavily, floodwater could just pass underneath the structure rather than seeping into the shelter.

The optional walls were where the design got clever.

Every shelter was going to be a wide rectangle, so a shelter would have a single sturdy wall or two.

The outer part of these bamboo walls would have clay smeared into every vertical gap.

She would make sure the walls faced the direction the rain and wind usually came from. It would give the wolves something solid at their backs while they slept.

Because even animals that hated enclosures would surely want one protected side.

As for the shelters with two permanent walls, she would make sure the corner faced the prominent wind and rain direction.

As for the optional walls...

She didn’t know yet. And that was the terrifying part. Creating something that might not work with what had already been created.

Those walls would determine how she would create the sturdy back wall. Whether the bamboo would be layered horizontally or vertically.

She would cross that bridge when she got there. At the very least, she had the foundation process to make her decision.

Tera remembered the headache that disturbed her when she tried to design this.

All in all, the optional walls would need to be flexible, something that can be removed and placed back easily.

Especially in a way that wouldn’t harm the wolves or mistakenly drop on them.

During good weather, the optional walls would be open, and during storms the walls would be put back in place. And they had to be the type that breeze could still pass through when closed. Since the shelters would not have windows.

Unlike the permanent back wall, these optional ones, when closed, did not need to be waterproof. Tera was going to make sure the roof overhang extended three to four feet past the edge of the floor platform.

That would do the heavy lifting.

Rain would fall away from the living space, and not into it. The optional walls would just have to be a wind buffer, nothing more.

At the end of it all, when those optional walls were left open, there would be no barrier of any kind. Just the roof and floor extending outward into a covered porch. Every wolf in every shelter would have an unobstructed exit that way.

That was the psychological key to the whole design. A wolf who could always see the way out would never feel caged.

Four living shelters would be enough, especially since Tera would still include partitioning walls within them.

She would also have to create two more structures.

A properly sealed storage shelter. Clay would also help line the interior walls and create a cool, moisture-resistant storage environment.

She hadn’t given the beasts all these details, of course. Their heads would combust. However, she had described the shelters simply enough that the wolves now oddly looked forward to it.

Tera looked up from her thoughts.

The males had already started digging the area she had marked.

She wanted them to just dig a small level so it would be there when they returned from setting up the fenced enclosure for the cubs.

Tera had seven months and one week left on the task timer.

This was a whole lot of work for that many months, but for some strange reason, she felt like she might enjoy this very much. Even more than the water channel task.

She was finally going to build an actual building.

Notes:

This is what a minka looks like.

A back wall is a rear-facing wall, basically one without windows and mostly used for support. Aside from technical terms, in this story, it would be the only stable wall, while the rest would be mobile or optional.

For those who still don’t understand, a better way to describe the optional walls would be curtains that can be removed and put back in place, but nothing permanent like the back wall.

Joists are structural parts of a building. For example, it could be wood/steel (or any other materials—like bamboo in our case). They would be arranged horizontally across the open area that would be the floor. These panels would be attached to the walls, and then the actual flooring would be placed on top of these connecting joists.